1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a database updating technology, and particularly relates to an information processing apparatus that performs updating of an object oriented database (OODB), to an information processing method performed by the information processing apparatus, and to a computer program product causing a computer to execute the information processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, an OODB model that is used in managing objects, each being a compilation of attributes, relations, and procedures, is becoming a mainstream database model.
Typically, in an OODB, schema information that defines object structures is managed in a corresponding manner with the objects. Thus, when changes are made to the schema information of a particular object, it also becomes necessary to make changes to the object corresponding to that schema information.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H07-200381 discloses a technology in which information regarding changes in the attributes, relations, and procedures that occur with changes in the schema information is retained as a component object. That enables making changes to the attributes, relations, and procedures in the objects independently of the changes in the schema information. For that reason, the changes to the schema information can be performed in a speedy manner.
Meanwhile, when changes are made to the schema information, it is necessary to reflect the changed schema information in the corresponding objects in original form. However, although the technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H07-200381 enables making changes to the schema information in a speedy manner; no improvement is achieved regarding the object generation processing that occurs on a frequent basis. Because of that, each time an object generation request is received; the object generation processing needs to be performed based on the schema information thereby making it difficult to perform high-speed processing with respect to the object generation request. Particularly, in an embedded device having a limited-capacity central processing unit (CPU), it is difficult to perform high-speed processing with respect to object generation requests.